As You Loathe It

SCENE II. Another part of the heath. Storm still. Lear: O raging tempest, drown the clamor of these milk-livered Black Keys. No longer suffer me the cruelty of their unremitting taunt. Deliver me from the rump-fed scut of these bootless Ohioan fuckjobs, or should I not be worthy of eternity’s quiet embrace, pray singe mine ears so that I should no longer bear the acrid nostalgia of their gut-gripping rot.

The Fool: The Black Keys are a really awesome blues duo—authentic old blues and garage rock, and kinda modern too. I saw them with Radiohead and it was fucking off the hook. So stripped down and raw and simple. They recorded Magic Potion in drummer Patrick Caney’s basement. I mean, a basement, that’s fucking raw, man. They don’t have to deal with commercial bullshit. It sounds so refreshing and real.

Lear: By God’s teeth! How possibly can I bear the bludgeoning of this gorbellied offal? Did we not suffer through enough crunch-pedal ejaculations of pottle-deep Zeppelin zealots and bluesman fetishists with the brother-sister act? Lo, at least Meg White was toothsome and fair! But the play-acted vestiges of these mewling, pasty clotpolls bear the odorous stench of decayed codpiece!

The Fool: Yeah, Meg was hot. But the White Stripes certainly “had the blues,” you know? The Black Keys might be white people from Ohio, but white people can have the blues! Especially if they’re poor! Aren’t people in Ohio poor, anyway?

Lear: Gahhhhhhh!

Lear gnashes teeth, rends garments.

The Fool: It’s about expressing yourself. To play the blues all you need is authenticity, like the kind you can hear right away in the sound of singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach’s voice. Like, he howls like one of those old black guys, Lenny Kravitz, on “Just a Little Heat.” You know it’s soulful. And even when they tone it down or whatever on “You’re the One,” it’s still sounds so real and shit, he might as well be sitting on a rocking chair and spitting into a jug on a porch in Mississippi. Except it’s sexier than that. The down-and-dirty blues are sexy.

Lear: Speak then to their inexcusable beef-witted verse? Do they wax sincere with false simplicity? O, that I were able to forgive the scuttle and crot of their banal noisemaking, should I then not take offence at the lack of a better coupling for “fire” than “desire?” What of “ire?”

The Fool: I think we’ve got “ire” covered.

Lear: Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart that’s sorry yet for thee.

Curtain.

The Black Keys play the Nokia Theatre November 11, nokiatheatrenyc.com